Snakes on a Bus

Hey all,
Well Antigua is a lot like we´ve read and heard about. Full of tourists and not to be missed. The city has afforded us a nice market, a good hostel with a kitchen, free breakfast, coffee and plenty of surrounding towns that are worth visiting. We were happy to find out that every October 28th a local town, San Andres de Itzapa, has an all day/all night festival to honor its pagan saint, Rilaj Maam, who´s likeness is always displayed with a big cigar hanging from his mouth and bottle of booze clutched in his left arm. Accordingly, in his honor, we witnessed people get stupendously drunk and ferociously chuff down cigars like we had never seen before. In front of a church, there was a block buster line of people waiting to pay respects to the image of this saint with offerings of roses, cigars and booze. Outside of the church people danced to great live music and Lisa was asked to dance twice by drunk old men, to which she politely declined. In front of the crowd of dancers locals created small fires comprised of cigars, candles, booze and herbs to pay repects to this much revered hedonist saint. It started to rain and we decided it was about time to head back to Antigua, but, on our way out of the festival grounds, Lisa felt compelled to purchase a likeness of Rilaj Maam, "woman´s intuition". The vendor told us he would bring us luck, safe travels, happiness and all things good, but only with the accompanying herbs and stones, all for a fair price of course. Not wanting to hex ourselves, we made the purchase. With the statue and herbs in tow we ventured out of the arena. . . just in time to avoid what sounded like a volley of gun fire in the distance. Bang bang bang, pop pop pop and we started to run along with all the locals around us. We caught the first bus we saw, and by luck it was going back to Antigua and our hostel. As we started to comprehend what just happened (though it is worth noting that we are still not sure if what we heard was gun fire) a man entered the bus carrying a burlap sack, tied at the top, that Lisa was positively sure, wiggled.
Jolly Rogers OUT
Snakes on a Bus

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